If you want to know if your area is recovering from the real estate crash, you need to watch out for these 8 signs.

* Watch out for frequent purchases made by investors and first-time homebuyers.  Watch out for an increase in sales of newly built homes versus discounted foreclosed properties.  Improved flow credit also show a recovering housing market.
* Find existing home sales.  Statistics on sales and prices of existing single-family homes provides general information regarding the real estate market.

* The Housing Market Index by The National Association of Home Builders rates the present single-family sales and single-family sales in the next six months.  Check out this rating to help you obtain a sense of demand for new houses.
* Check out the number of permits given out for new housing units each month through the New Residential Construction Index provided by the U.S. Census Bureau.
* Get information regarding New Residential Sales Index.  This index shows that a sales agreement was signed in the area.
* Purchase Application Index.  This index lets you know how confident people are about their financial standing and ability to buy a home.  This has a ripple effect because an increase in applications at mortgage lenders helps promote more construction jobs and brings revenues to homebuilders, lenders and home-furnishing companies.
* U.S. Foreclosure Index.  This will examine the number of formal notices like defaults, foreclosure auctions, and Real Estate Owned Statistics.